Grease: Deep Thoughts About Summer Nights, Performing Gender, and the Romance of Leather Pants and Letterman Sweaters

Send us a message! Include how to reach you if you want a response. Grease is the time, is the place, is the motionGrease is the way we are feelingThis week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily revisits one of the classic movies of her Gen X childhood: Grease. This musical comedy was set in high school, but all of the lead actors were in their 20s and 30s, which may help explain why much of the lessons about romance, performing adulthood, and gender expression sailed over her head as a child. The lyrics in many of the songs were unapologetically ugly--the Greasers actually ask Danny if Sandy put up a fight!--but the actual characterization of the young men and women show that they are adolescents flailing their way through what they think masculinity, femininity, sexuality, adulthood, and romance are supposed to look like. Even the ick factor of Sandy changing into a leather-clad Greaser girl for Danny at the end is a little more nuanced than the Guy sisters remembered, since all she did was change her clothes, while Danny actually ran track for the entire school year. Talk about romance--maybe?We'll be hopelessly devoted to you--if you listen to this episode!Mentioned in this episode:Grease: Performing GenderYes, Grease was deeply problematic – but it was ahead of its time, tooTagsdeep thoughts about stupid sh*t, romance, women, feminism, classic movies, film, gen x childhood, film analysis, nostalgia, cultural commentary, analyzing film tropes, comedy, movie reviews, storytelling, comedy podcast, pop culture, musical comedy, grease, john travolta, olivia newton johnOur theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus content, live zooms with Tracie & Emily, discounts on merch, and early access to Deep Thou​​ghts by visiting us on Patreon or find us on ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/guygirlsWe are the sister podcasters Tracie Guy-Decker and Emily Guy Birken, known to our extended family as the Guy Girls.We're hella smart and completely unashamed of our overthinking prowess. We love 80s and 90s movies and tv, science fiction, comedy, and murder mysteries, good storytelling with lots of dramatic irony, analyzing film tropes with a side of feminism, and examining the pop culture of our Gen X childhood for gender dynamics, psychology, sociology, religious allegory, and whatever else we find. We have super-serious day jobs. For the bona fides, visit our individual websites: tracieguydecker.com and emilyguybirken.com. For our work together, visit guygirlsmedia.com We are on socials! Find us on Facebook at fb.com/dtasspodcast and on Insta at instagram.com/guygirlsmedia. You can also email us at guygirlsmedia at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you!